A WILD WAY TO START ROCKING AT THE SCOTTIES
Two of Canada’s best women’s teams set to square off in dramatic opener in Moose Jaw
When Curling Canada, in consultation with curlers across the country, came up with a plan to create a wild card play-in game at the national men’s and women’s championships, this is exactly what everyone had in mind.
The plan was to give top teams in the country that play out of strongly contested provinces a second chance to get into the Brier and Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
On Friday, the wild card game at the Scotties in Moose Jaw, Sask., will feature the No. 1 and No. 3 teams in Canada, according to the Canadian Team Ranking System standings.
Tracy Fleury’s team, based out of East St. Paul, Man., and Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg will square off, with one team moving on to likely contend for a Canadian championship and the other going home early.
Fleury is ranked second in the world, behind only Olympic champion Anna Hasselborg of Sweden, while Jones, the 2014
Olympic gold medallist, is ranked fifth.
That makes for an epic matchup on Friday night at Mosaic Place, before the actual tournament even gets underway.
“Our dream isn’t done yet,” Fleury’s third Selena Njegovan said.
“We have another chance to get to the Scotties and we’ll have to make sure we play well in that game.”
As great as it is for these teams to have a second chance, there’s a certain brutality to the playin game. Both teams will head out to Moose Jaw on Thursday, practice on Friday, then play a game that has all the drama and ruthlessness of a provincial final on Friday night before one team packs up and goes home.
There’s a reason why there aren’t a lot of one-game bonspiels out there.
“It’s not fun,” said Mike McEwen, the Manitoba men’s skip who will play in the Brier wild card game on Feb. 28 in Kingston, Ont.
McEwen played in the first Brier wild-card game in 2018 and beat Jason Gunnlaugson.
“That’s as gut-wrenching a game as you can play.”
The wild card was added in 2018 when the field for the national championships was expanded to 16 teams, including
those from Nunavut and Yukon.
Some of the more competitive players, including McEwen, found it unfair that those two territories and some other provinces, with very few curling clubs and curlers, would get the same number of Scotties and Brier entries as powerhouse provinces like Manitoba,
Alberta and Ontario.
So, in came the wild card game and it had proven to be a hit.
In 2018, Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson won the wild card game over Chelsea Carey of Alberta and went on to play in the final. At the 2019 Brier, Brendan Bottcher of Alberta topped John Epping of Ontario in Brandon, and also went on to lose the final.
Over the first two years of the new format, the wild card teams that have advanced to the Scotties and Brier have combined to go 31-13 and have made the championship pool every time.
What that suggests is Fleury and Jones have an excellent chance of contending for the Scotties title, as long as they win on Friday.
“We’ll give it a go,” said Jones, a six-time Canadian champion.
“You never know. We get to go to Moose Jaw and hopefully, we get to stay longer than a day.”
Fleury was the favourite heading into Manitoba provincials, but lost to Jones in the semifinal. Jones then lost the final to Einarson, who enters the Scotties as the top seed.
Whichever team wins the wild card game will be seeded third in a field that also includes threetime champion Rachel Homan and defending champ Carey.
“We were hoping not to need it, but a second chance is always a good thing, so we’ll take it,” Fleury said. Twyman@postmedia.com Twitter.com/Ted_Wyman